


Evening Ebb

by dewinter



Series: The Bloody Sire [7]
Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12154326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewinter/pseuds/dewinter
Summary: A life to reclaim, and someone to reclaim it with.*October, 1948. Port Ellen, Islay.





	1. Islay, October 1948

Cold flagstones against his feet. It was still dark outside, just. Behind him, Farrier felt Collins shift and curl into the space he’d left. Every morning a cruel wrench to tear himself away from the mingled warmth of their bodies. He dressed quickly against the autumn chill. Not much different from the war: thick jumpers and thick socks. The cold was as piercing out on the North Atlantic as at angels five, and he could still feel Colditz in his bones, sometimes, icy and forbidding.

“What time is it?”

Farrier looked up from fastening his cardigan. Collins was propping himself up on his elbows, squinting. Hair rumpled and magnificent. His beautiful boy.

Farrier pulled his oilskin bib up and snapped the straps onto his shoulders. “Early,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

Collins snuffled indistinctly, and burrowed back into the blankets.

“That hunk of bacon in the icebox needs eating.”

Collins grunted in what might have been assent.

“Do you want crab for tea tomorrow?” There was so much glory in the mundane. Farrier wondered if he’d ever tire of these little, dull exchanges.

There was no reply. Farrier smiled to himself. He’d been relearning the habit, and it came more easily with each passing year. He was gathering up his sou’wester and pack when the lump in the middle of the bed stirred again.

“Tomorrow evening you’ll be back?” Collins’ voice was scratchy.

Farrier glanced back. “Yes. I’m helping Callum and his boys dip the flock on Wednesday.”

Collins nodded, chewing his lip. Farrier knew he was fighting against the urge to tell him to be careful, to come back. He grinned, and dropped his haversack.

“Don’t suppose you could be prevailed upon to kiss a fellow goodbye? Or are you still half asleep?”

Collins rubbed his eyes. “Still at least three quarters asleep, but very amenable to kissing.” He yawned widely. “I’m no’ getting out from under this blanket, though, so you’ll have to drag yourself over here.” 

It was a nice kiss, soft and familiar and drowsy, and Farrier trudged down the rutted path from the croft towards Port Ellen with the echo of Collins’ mouth still on his. The sun was rising, stencilling the masts and cabins and stretched out nets against the water. Gulls calling and the crews already loading their gear aboard. All the bustle and humanity the war had stifled, now reinvigorated.

“Mornin’,” Macleod called as Farrier hoisted himself onto the deck of the _Morag._ Farrier nodded at him. Macleod was his beau ideal of a skipper – level-headed and interested only in the catch, not who he employed to help him bring it in. He paid only cursory attention to Farrier, and Farrier was grateful for it.

There had been a small flurry of excitement and confusion at his arrival three years ago. Small places thrived on gossip, and for Brody Collins’ boy to come back to the family croft after so long away with his face half-melted and a taciturn Englishman in tow had sustained Port Ellen and the surrounding hamlets for several weeks. Somehow, though, Collins had convinced the islanders that Farrier was merely a warsick comrade looking to ease his demons in the solace and beauty of Argyll, and was not at all mysterious. An extra pair of hands around the croft – too much to manage by himself.

And they were used to airmen, in these parts, at least, with the base at Glenegedale still manned. Training flights roaring over the Oa peninsula almost daily, and boys in blue propping up the bar at The Ardview most evenings.

Then Archie Campbell had come back to the island in ‘46 with an Italian bride called Carlotta, who was much more interesting than Farrier, much better looking, and had much more to offer the curious islanders in the way of decent cooking and merry conversation. After that, any interest in Farrier disappeared, and he was left alone to pull his weight aboard the _Morag,_ to stride along the dunes with a border terrier gambolling excitedly at his heels, and to occasionally drop into the post office to bring the postmaster a flask of tea and a crudely-made sandwich.

The _Morag_ pulled out of the little harbour and headed into the sunrise. Farrier tugged his wool hat down over his ears and watched as the headland come into view. Their little whitewashed croft, crooked and lonely, stood out against the morning sky, a thin curl of smoke rising from the chimney. Collins had awoken, then, and stoked the range for tea. He would be pottering about now, shuffling from room to room with a blanket about his shoulders and the tip of his nose pink with cold.

When the _Morag_ returned tomorrow evening, the windows of the croft would be almost the first thing Farrier would see, bright and welcoming, because Collins would have left the shutters open for him. Farrier would trudge up the path in the gloom with a couple of fat crabs wrapped in newspaper under his arm. They’d eat with their plates on their laps, the dog curled up at their feet, Tommy Dorsey on the wireless, their armchairs pulled close to the wood burner, because winter was on the approach. It was a good thought; the best thought.


	2. Islay, October 1948

There was already a small queue outside the post office when Collins clattered across the cobbles on his bicycle.

“Hold your horses, Mrs Tindal,” he said as he fumbled with his keys. “Be open in just a jiffy.”

“I’ve been standing here for _fifteen minutes,_ young man,” she tutted, shifting her parcels under her arm.

“And it’s just about three minutes to nine by my watch, Mrs T,” Collins said. He caught Maisie Macgregor’s eye and stifled a smile.

The queue diminished rapidly. He dealt quickly with the various parcels and orders, sent a few telegrams, filled out a few postal orders, and told Maisie, steadfastly ignoring Mrs Tindall’s blatant eavesdropping, that of course he and Mr Farrier would be delighted to act as chaperones for the school ceilidh in a fortnight’s time, and they would both stand up with her _and_ with Miss Shields, if they desired it.

Another unhurried morning on the island. Gentle, time-worn rhythms established well before the war and resilient enough to outlast it. He ate his lunch perched on the harbour wall before helping the ferry hands drag the mailbags into the cargo hold.

Top brass had wanted him to stay at Cranwell, to train pilots. Boys who’d still been in school when the war began. He’d walked away, and of all the regrets the war had piled upon him, that wasn’t one. He had a life to reclaim, and someone to reclaim it with.

Though he wondered, sometimes, whether they ought to have stayed in London, where no one knew them. There were smoky, underground places there, where they could have gone together, where Collins could have leaned into Farrier’s body and called him _darling,_ called him _sweetheart,_ out loud, in front of other people. The years they’d lost. London might have helped them find those years again.

But there was a peace here, something he’d never thought he’d find again, in the worst depths of the war. Here, the land was wild, and the sea wilder. The sky went on forever. It made him feel small, and inconsequential, and there was some odd comfort in that, to be dwarfed by the might of nature. They were almost alone among the clouds again.

At night, in the pitch black, not a soul for miles around save for Farrier, his arm a dead weight across Collins’ chest, it was quiet enough that Collins thought he could hear his heart beating, and give thanks for every beat. It might not last forever. Someone had written, once, about lovely things that did not endure. Collins couldn’t remember how the sentence ended. The lovely things – the lovelier things. For now this was enough.

He and Farrier seldom spoke about what there was between them. There was little point: it had been settled, really, the moment Farrier had dumped his pack on the doorstep of Collins’ grimy London bedsit. And even if he’d wanted to talk about it, Collins wasn’t sure the words had been invented.

Farrier was quiet when they were in bed together. Sometimes he would say, breathlessly, _okay?_ And _alright?_ with his fingers circled around Collins’ wrist. And, once or twice, his first name, clipped and rough and sacred against his collarbone, _Al, please._ It was enough; it was more than enough.

And there was a moment, once. Gathering driftwood together, picking over the sandy cove a few hundred yards from the croft, he’d looked up and found Farrier perched on a boulder, watching him carefully.

“What?” he’d said, arms full of twisted, bone-white branches.

Farrier heaved himself up from the rock. He moved more stiffly, these days. There was a care and labour to his movements that hadn’t been there before, and Collins knew there must be alterations in how his own body moved, too. He must occupy the world differently, now, with all he’d seen, and done, and had done to him.

“I was just thinking,” Farrier said. He stubbed at a stranded jellyfish with his boot. He glanced at Collins, the wind whipping his hair across his face, squinting against the pale spring sun. “I was thinking how glad I am to be here.” His voice was casual, but his face was sincere. 

Collins busied himself adding another piece of driftwood to his pile. “Me too,” he said to the dirty sand. And then looked at Farrier, because some things were worth saying out loud, and carefully, if only once. “I mean. I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“Good,” Farrier said. “Because I plan on being here with you for quite some time.” He’d caught Collins off guard, then, striding across to him and kissing him firmly on the mouth, the first and only time he’d ever kissed him outside, exposed, to whoever might be passing, and to the vast, bleak sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did promise this would be self-indulgent… With apologies to Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Jack Lowden, who is definitely not from the Inner Hebrides. 
> 
> Thank you for all your kind words and kudos/kudoses/kudi/kudeaux; this has been a real joy to write, as has talking to other lovely people in this fandom. I’m not hugely active on Tumblr these days but you can find me at electriclandlady if anyone wants to shout about pilots :)


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